


I Lit a Candle in the Window

by Penwyn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: H/D Owl Post 2013, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:30:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penwyn/pseuds/Penwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You always light a candle in the window when he goes on raids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Lit a Candle in the Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Writcraft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writcraft/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, writcraft. It turns out that some of your favourite genres are mine, too, so I was really excited to write this—so much so that I finished it _at the beginning of September_. I used FOUR of your prompts. I hope you recognise them when you see them.

The night is cold, so cold that it makes your bones ache despite the fact that you’re still young. The hair at your temples is fading, turning as white as the snow that whirls and pours past the window of your childhood home, and you feel old and worn with worry. It started snowing this morning, when you were in your bed and curled around the most familiar body you’ve ever known, and you debated then whether the trip here would be worth your trouble.

Thick and fast, the snow fell all day. The clouds were as thick as a Weasley sweater over Britain, dark and ominous, before they broke, and you were relieved when they did. Warm hands curled around your middle and warm lips kissed your bare shoulder, and you loved the snow then.

Now, in this moment, you hate it.

Snow has this way about it that refuses to let anyone be cheerless; even in the darkest night, it shines so brightly as to light up the world brighter than the moon could ever hope to achieve. The grounds of the Manor are now so thickly blanketed that they are nearly day-bright, promising a Christmas morning that will be beautiful and full of promise.

When you were a child, you loved the snow in a different way. Snow was a chance at frivolity, a chance to play with your parents and see them completely at ease. Your mother bundled you such that you couldn’t put your arms down, and you followed along in your father’s footsteps as he made his way about the grounds. You loved making snowballs and _especially_ throwing them, loved falling into the snow on your back and making snow angels, and loved when your mother told the house-elves to make snow cream with vanilla.

Tonight, however, you hate the snow. Your breath on the window pane is so warm that it causes condensation on the glass, which freezes on the inside of the pane in sharp, spiky crystals that glimmer in the light of the candle you’ve lit and placed on the sill.

He’s going to come. He never hasn’t come.

“Draco, darling, come away from the window.” Your mother’s voice is frailer than it used to be, just like she is herself frailer than she used to be, and you want to turn away to enjoy your Christmas Eve with your parents. They’re getting older, older than you like to think about, and they deserve a Christmas with their son, but you can’t tear yourself away.

The Manor is warm and cosy, this room especially. The Christmas tree is enormous, decked in bows and garland and ornaments that were worth thousands. Presents are stacked high, for them, for you, and even for him. It’s only the third Christmas they’ve bought presents for him, even though you’ve been together for years. They like him. You love him, more than anything in the world.

That’s why you’re standing at the window, candle lit, staring out into the snow. You’re waiting for him to arrive.

You knew what you were getting into, all those years ago. He was a senior-level Auror then, always working and going over cases. He lived on danger—he still does, and you know it—and when he went on a raid, you lit a candle in the window and waited for him to come back. You almost lost him once, and you had a candle lit in the window for three whole days before Weasley came to your flat to tell you that he was in hospital.

They hadn’t known about you before then. He woke up in his hospital bed asking for you, and when you got there, you saw him bruised and bleeding still, cursed nearly beyond recognition. “You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met,” you said, and you kissed him on his cracked lips, and they didn’t have to ask. He was in St Mungo’s for a month, and you never left. When he came home with you, he never left.

You were, and you are, irrevocably in love with Harry Potter. 

You weren’t sure at first. You had other things to think about, such as your marriage to Astoria Greengrass and your son, but you thought that you knew it for sure when you saw him lying in that bed nearly dead. You left Astoria, told her that she could have anything that she wanted except for your son, and now you share custody. Scorpius loves Harry, too. He never resented him, you think, for breaking your marriage apart. He and Albus are obnoxious about it, and you’re lucky you get a moment alone with Harry over the holidays.

You did know for sure when Harry and Ginny divorced, soon after that. She saw everything in the hospital room, and she did resent you for a long time. She doesn’t any longer, and you’re on friendly terms. You daresay you like her. She still doesn’t understand how this has happened, and you never try to explain it to her because you aren’t sure that you can.

How can you explain how you love someone, or how you came to love them in the first place? 

You knew you liked him when he brought you coffee in your office in the Financial Division of the Ministry, warm and soothing on a cold winter’s morning. It was flavoured with pumpkin, and it was rich on your tongue; you smiled at him then, grateful, and he laughed before he promised you another the next day. He brought you coffee every day, your own personal saviour. The Fiendfyre incident wasn’t counted towards his sainthood in your eyes, and coffee delivery paved Potter’s way to your favour.

You knew you fancied him when you reached over at lunch to take a chip from his plate and he smacked your hand away, telling you that he didn’t like people taking food from his plate. You said that you’d never encountered food aggression in a human being, and he smacked you with the day’s Daily Prophet. You don’t remember the sting of the smack, but you remember his smile that day, warm and familiar.

You knew you really, _really_ fancied him when you encountered him in a supply closet at work and were in such close proximity that you smelled his laundry detergent. You pressed around him to fetch a new quill from the box on the shelf that was above your head, and you weren’t tall enough to reach even on your tiptoes. Before you could grab your wand, he put his hands on your hips and lifted you up, fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. You grabbed your new quill, and when he set you back on your feet, you turned and looked down at him, and he was smiling again. “We’re wizards, Potter. We have wands,” you said, and you waved yours in his face to distract from the warmth in your face.

“You remind me all the time,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten yet.”

You wondered if he fancied you back the morning before Christmas Eve that year, when he dropped by your office and asked if you had any plans for the holiday. You told him you had the annual party at the Malfoy Manor, and he told you he was going to spend the night by the fire with a book before he played Santa for the kids. “You should come to my party. It’ll be boring, but there’ll be good champagne,” you said, the words falling from your mouth before you could stop them. He _smiled_ at you and said that he would come if he could get away.

You knew he fancied you when you stepped into the corridor at your party to escape the noise for a moment, and he followed you out of the room. “It really is a dreadfully boring party,” he said, and you registered the feel of his fingers gripping your sleeve before he was pulling you into the nearest room, one of the many pantries near the kitchen. You spilled your champagne on the wood flooring when he pressed you up against the shelves, and you dropped your glass when he kissed you.

His mouth was warm and hard, his teeth biting painfully into your bottom lip, and you gasped against the kiss because it hurt. He tasted like wine, like the vintage your mother prefers for Christmas, and you gripped his shoulders and pushed him away. “You’re drunk,” you said, even though you didn’t really care because you were feeling a little tipsy yourself.

“Not that drunk,” he said, and you believed him. His hands were on your hips again, and his tongue was in your mouth, and you melted between him and the potatoes pressing into your back. He wasn’t too drunk to pull at your clothes, ripping off buttons that were more expensive than his flat; his lips blazed a trail down your neck and sucked at your collarbone, and you wanted him to fuck you so badly that you thought you would die. Your hands tore at his shirt and you bit right back at him, all the hatred you’d felt for him as a child rising up in your throat and making you want to rip at him and devour him; you did just that, shoving your hands in his clothes and feeling his skin heating up beneath your fingers as you bit so hard into his shoulder you tasted blood. You pushed your hand down his trousers and felt his cock straining against your palm, and you squeezed it in your fingers. His breath hitched against your shoulder; you felt a little thrill of victory, because you couldn’t beat him at Quidditch but you could make him growl and shove his cock in your fist, and that was better.

He didn’t fuck you, not then, because the house-elves came looking for the damned potatoes; you righted yourself and you almost scolded him, almost, before he grinned at you and whispered in your ear that Ginny was playing Santa that night and gave him leave to stay at the party as long as he liked. He didn’t fuck you that night, either, because by the time you had the opportunity, you were both so drunk that you had no hope of getting your cock up for at least three days.

He fucked you on New Year’s Eve, when you’d chosen to go to _his_ party this time around. Scorpius talked you into it, and you let him under the pretence that he could spend some time with his best friend; Harry smiled at you and warmed your heart when he opened the door. Ginny was distant but kind, and you drank cheap ale until the room was warm and your laugh came easily. Granger and Weasley were there with their own brood, and you needed all the help you could get.

You had little hope of fucking him there, in his house, with his family and friends around him, but at half eleven, he made an excuse you don’t remember to speak to you in the guest room. No one even looked twice, and the wireless was so loud you could hear it even after he shut the door. “You’re barking,” you said even as his lips brushed your ear. “Absolutely fucking mental, Potter.”

“Might be.” He shoved you onto your back on the bed, and you thought about protesting before he crawled over you and kissed you like he’d been starving for it. You bit and sucked at his tongue, your hands pulling at his shoulders, and when his shirt came untucked, you pulled it over his head. He used his wand to lock the door and place a Silencing Charm, a whispered pair of spells against your lips, before he went to your neck and you arched your back with a moan that surprised you.

You had never been vocal before, but you were then, when Harry undressed you and kissed every part of you that you’d have hexed him for looking at years ago. He marked your skin, drawing blood to the surface on your neck and chest and hips, and you buried your hands in his hair to urge him downward. The first touch of his tongue to your cock made you jolt upward, and you spread your legs so he could settle between your thighs while he took you in his mouth.

He had to have done it before—and he had, you later found out—he was so good at it, his throat opening to take you to the hilt while he tongued the shaft. His fingers curled around your balls, rubbing them, and you stared open-mouthed with hazy eyes at the sight of him, Harry Potter, sucking you off in a guest room. Just the thought of it made you want to come, and your hips jerked up in warning; he pulled off a moment before you could, and he came up over you again with a grin that made you nervous.

“I haven’t ever—”

“You’d best unclench then, Malfoy.”

You did unclench, though it took some persuading with lubricated fingers and heated words whispered against your ear, and if you’d thought that his fingers felt good fucking you, then you thought that his cock pushing into your arse was the best thing ever invented. Not that it didn’t hurt, of course; it hurt like hell at first, and you complained and smacked at his shoulders and threatened his financial solvency, but he laughed and slowed down, and soon you had your ankles in the air while you raked your nails across his back hard enough to draw blood. He came first, and you hit him. He made it up to you by riding your cock until you screamed. Thank Merlin for Silencing Charms.

Fucking Harry Potter was a violent affair for a long time. You worked out your aggression towards him that way, going so far as to break his nose three times and once hit his head so hard against the wall that you thought he was concussed. You fought over everything—who got to fuck whom, who got to come first—and everything was a competition. You loved it. You _thrived_ on it.

Then you went and fell in love with the prat, and you both softened your affections after he got landed in St Mungo’s. You had to, for a long time. He needed a long recovery, and you didn’t want to throw him around and hurt the bastard again; by the time he was better, it had stuck, and you came to love the softness of his calloused hands on your skin. 

You loved, and still love, just about everything about him but his job.

You lit candles in the window for him all the time when he went back to work. The Aurors couldn’t keep their noses out of anyone’s business, not that you really wanted them to, and Harry was on raids all the time. He came back cut up more than once, and you became obscenely good at healing charms. You should have been a Healer, he said, and you thought that you might consider it if things worsened.

He got promoted to Head Auror, and things got better for a time. The raids were always worse, though. The Head didn’t have to go out on easy missions; he had grunts for that. When you burned candles in the window for him after his promotion, you never left the window until he came home. You watched, and you waited.

You’re watching, and you’re waiting, and it’s Christmas Eve. The snow is falling, and your fingers have grown cold on the window pane, and you can’t even think about your family behind you when he is out _there_.

He always comes to Christmas Eve at your parents’ house, even though they don’t throw parties any longer. They’re getting old, and it’s falling to you to throw the parties now. You don’t like to, so you usually don’t. You haven’t in years, so you and Harry come here with the kids every year to let them see their grandparents and dig through extravagant gifts; you think the gifts are at least half the reason Harry’s kids like coming along. Even James came around, and he’s here, too. You brought them all by yourself with the promise that he’d be there as soon as they finished their raid.

_If it wasn’t important, he wouldn’t have gone on Christmas Eve._

He hadn’t known about the raid before today, even as Head Auror. It came up quickly—their target, a werewolf who was specifically targeting families with children, had been spotted in a town in Ireland—and he had to go make sure everything went smoothly. Werewolves are always the worst for you. Having spent a full year in close proximity to Fenrir Greyback, you have a consuming phobia of them, and you begged Harry not to go. Not today.

Harry went anyway, kissing you on the mouth and telling you to take the kids on to the Manor, that he’d see you tonight. You were angry, furious even, and you struck out at him. “You always fucking do this! Our anniversary, our fucking date night last month, a thousand times, I swear to _fucking_ God if you don’t quit your fucking job, I will _leave_ you,” you screamed, right in his face. You wouldn’t, not really, and he knew it.

“I love you, Draco,” he whispered, and he kissed you again. You were so angry that you wanted to break his arm to keep him from going; instead, your shoulders fell and you looked away from him.

“I love you, too.” You never let him leave without saying it, not when he was going on a raid like this. He touched your face and you held his hand for a moment, and then he left. You watched him go, watched the door close behind him, and you felt smothered by your flat, so you left, too.

You wanted to walk, so you did. You stepped into the street, and the cold, wet air sunk into your brow and chilled you right to the bone. It was unsettling, even though you expected it, and you drew your scarf more tightly around your neck; the cold felt like a warning, and you thought that maybe Harry wouldn’t make it home tonight. You always thought that, but it lingered in your mind and made you miserable in the full hour it took to get to Ginny’s house on foot.

You took the kids, and now you’re here, staring out the window and waiting for Harry to come back. You hate to be kept waiting, you always have, but you tolerate it because you love him and you’ve built your life this way. It’s been ten years since he fucked you in his guest room, almost to the day, and you think that you should probably throw a party for that particular anniversary.

You hear Scorpius and Albus laughing behind you as they tear open their presents from Lucius and Narcissa, and you feel stifled in the enormous house. The heat from the fire is getting to you, and you have to get out of there; you excuse yourself for a smoke, and you practically run to the front door. The cold hits you like a brick wall, and you gasp out a visible breath as you throw yourself into it. The snow is up to your ankles, swallowing your feet, and you cast charms on your shoes so you can walk across the snow without sinking into it.

It’s quiet. The wind is soft, and the snowflakes are fat and wet as they pepper your clothes. There isn’t a sound, it seems, in the entire world save for the soft whisper of snow falling through bare branches and settling on the ground. You can’t even hear your own breathing. Your footfalls are muffled in the snow as you make your way to the gardens.

You love your mother’s rose gardens. They bloom year-round, even covered in snow, and vines seem to reach for you as you walk into them. Ice has gathered on the petals of the roses, tiny icicles threatening to bend their heads, and you touch them with bare fingers. The ice breaks off at your touch, fragile, and you lift your head to the sky. The clouds have blotted out the moon and the stars, and you feel alone.

You haven’t felt alone in a long time, and it takes you by surprise. It’s an awful feeling. You know you’re being ridiculous—most of your family is gathered just inside, on the other side of that wall, and you can see them through the window. Your candle is burning low, and you rub your bare hands together but you don’t put them in your pockets.

The fragile silence is broken so suddenly and sharply that you jump, and you begin to run. Hope is soaring in your chest; you know that sound, it’s apparition, and you run around the side of the Manor with a grin on your face. _Fucking finally_.

Red Auror robes are in sharp contrast to the snow around you, and you realise a moment before you grab his shoulder that it isn’t Harry. It’s Weasley, and you grab him anyway, whirling him around and staring up at him.

He turns and he grabs you, and he’s so pale that you don’t even notice that his hand is shaking until your world turns upside down, and you’re apparating, and you want to vomit because it’s a long apparition before your feet hit the ground. You don’t get the chance to look; Ron’s hands are on your shoulders and pushing you, and you’re running together.

People are screaming, and you’re throwing off your scarf and coat because they’re hindering you.

It’s snowing in Ireland, too, and it’s thicker on the ground here than it was at home. It’s not white, though; it’s red and wet and melting, and it’s littered with dead bodies. Aurors are dead, people you don’t recognise are dead, and you see dead children, too. You smell smoke, acrid and harsh in your nostrils, and you think you might vomit after all.

Ron’s hands throw you forward, faster than you can move your feet, and you fall hard on your knees in the snow; you cough and start to scream at him, but a hand reaches out and grabs onto your wrist, and you turn your head to see him staring at you.

Harry.

There’s something wrong with Harry.

His eyes meet yours, all emerald green in a sea of red, and a hysterical part of you thinks that it’s fitting, it’s _Christmas_. You scramble to him in the snow, your fingers numb from the cold, and you rip his broken glasses from his face. Steam is rising from his chest and his stomach, and you try not to look down but you do; he’s been disembowelled, claws having ripped his skin apart, and you’re seeing parts of him that you never wanted to.

You hear people apparating in around you, but you can’t look away from him. You grab at his jaw and you lean in, wand in your other hand, and you’re whispering spells that you remember Severus whispering in your ear when Voldemort and Greyback lived in your house, but Harry’s breath is slowing, and his eyelids are heavy.

“Draco,” he says, just barely. His voice is wet and harsh, and you only chant your spells harder. His hands lift off the snow like they weigh a thousand pounds, and he grabs your wrists and pushes your wand away. “We won, Draco.”

You feel the tears on your face freezing in the miserable cold, and you lean over and you kiss him because he’s dying, and you can’t do anything. _You should have been a Healer._ Harry’s voice is in your head from a happier day, and you hate him for not making you do it. You hear Healers around you, and you scream at them. You don’t even know what you say, because all you can hear in the world is Harry’s breath coming slower and slower.

“Don’t die,” you whisper. “It’s Christmas. You promised you’d come home.” Your voice is broken and choked, and you push your forehead against his.

He smiles at you, his hand in your hair, and he shakes his head just a little. “I’m sorry, Draco.” He keeps saying your name, and you realise it’s because it’s the last thing he wants on his lips. A Healer is there, next to you, and you can see the frantic movement of her hands as she works, but Harry’s eyes are closing, and you feel his heart sputtering under your hand.

“Don’t die,” you beg. You never beg. “Don’t die. I love you, please.”

Harry dies in your arms as the bell in the nearby village announces midnight mass on Christmas Day, as you beg him to stay awake, and you can’t stop him from sleeping. They can’t pull you off of him, and you lay in the snow with him, your head on his chest. The morning dawned with Healers collecting bodies, and they collected you, too, because you weren’t going to leave him. You promised you weren’t going to leave.

You made all kinds of promises. You promised that you would love him as surely as you have ever loved anything in the world, that you would honour him to the best of your ability from the day that you married him three years ago, and that you would never be bored of him. You promised that you would never take off the ring that sometimes feels like an anchor around your finger, even if you wanted to. 

Harry made all kinds of promises, too. He promised that he would love you as long as he lived, that he would be with you until the very end, and that he forgave you all your trespasses as children. He promised that nothing would ever tear you apart, because what you have—had—is truer than anything he has ever known. He promised that he would be home for Christmas.

You promised him that you would light a candle in the window for him every time he left, and you would wait for him until he came home.

You kept your promises.

\---

_I can’t stop you fighting to sleep.  
Sleep in heavenly peace._   



End file.
